Tours are provided of physical spaces containing a number of objects of interest in a number of different situations. Locating objects within the physical space requires adequate directions, information and general guidance on how to go about the tour. The most common tour situations include a tour of a museum, a park or a facility.
Museums contain displays of individual objects. The objects may be displayed individually or they may be grouped together in categories. Information about the objects may be provided in written text positioned near the object. Many objects may have historical characters identified with the object. In addition, the objects may be associated with a location where they were created or found. The amount of information that can be provided on each object is limited by the area available for printed text. The text must be large enough to be read at a distance of several feet, and if text is displayed in more than one language the amount of space available is further reduced.
The problem of providing information beyond text displayed near the object in a museum has been addressed in a number of ways. Publications can be made available ranging from a one page handout to a detailed book with pictures, maps and an index. Audio recordings can be used to provide information. Audio recordings may take the form of speakers that are located near an object or group of objects to provide information about the object or group of objects when activated by a visitor. Another form of audio recording presentation can be provided through a cassette or receiver device given to a visitor who can access the audio through a speaker or a set of headphones connected to the device. In the same manner that audio recording can be provided, audio-visual presentations can be provided either on demand at or near the object, or under the control of the individual visitor through a portable device.
Several problems arise when presenting information in an audio format. Delivering the information in an audio format requires hiring individuals with suitable voices to record the audio presentations from a script. Any changes or updates to the script of the presentation may require obtaining the same individual so that a voice recording of the changed or updated script will match the previous voice recording. Therefore, a problem with current audio tours includes the difficulty of updating the content of the tours. Another problem is that interactivity with the recorded text is limited to selecting from a menu of different recordings. An audio-only tour limits the type of data that can be offered. These limitations may apply even when the audio recording is presented in more than a single channel of delivery such as an audio visual presentation.
An additional way to provide information is through the use of live tour guides. A live tour guide is an individual who is trained, knowledgeable, and available to provide additional information as well as to guide the visitors through the physical location. Live tour guides have at least two distinct advantages. First, a live tour guide may be able to interact with the visitors by asking for questions and providing responses to the questions. Second, and most significantly, a good live tour guide can present information in a compelling narrative context such as a story narrative format. A story narrative format is desirable because such a format greatly increases interest, understanding and retention of the information. However, good tour guides are expensive, the range of information that can be provided by a live tour guide is limited by the experience and education of the tour guide, and human beings are prone to make mistakes so that the quality of each individual presentation can vary.
Another tour situation involves providing a tour of an outdoor location such as national park. For example, visitors to the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania may view the site from observation points or they may choose to walk to and visit various points on the landscape. In order to enhance the information that can be provided to a visitor at a physical location that is an extended outdoor site, an information provider may not be able to use some of the alternatives that are available in a museum tour. For example, placing signage or placing visitor activated sound sites around the physical location may not be permissible because such signage or sites would spoil the natural appearance of the site. Another example of an outdoor location requiring a tour is a national park such as Yosemite. Any use of automated information must not be intrusive on the natural appearance of the site and therefore, live tour guides are relied upon more than automated information. Tours of outdoor physical locations share the common need to provide information about objects, characters and further locations associated with the objects and characters.
An additional situation arises in providing an orientation tour of a manufacturing facility or an office complex to new employees. A further situation arises in providing educational tours such as a tour of a nuclear power plant. Moreover, safety orientations regarding hazardous locations in areas such as an airport, an oil refinery, or a shipbuilding yard call for touring a physical location and pointing out the specific areas where attention must be paid to possible hazards. Such tours may need to take place while the facility being toured is in operation. Background noise may impede or prevent the use of audio sites or tour guides. Moreover, audio sites or tour guides may interfere with the ongoing operations of the physical locations to be toured. Additionally, the size of the group needing a tour may vary from a single individual to a many individuals.
All of the tours discussed above have common needs. The common needs include locating specific objects within each physical location, providing current and correct information regarding the object, relating the object to an overall physical location, and relating the object to persons associated with the object. In many situations, persons taking tours do not speak the same language and translators are necessary. If information is to be presented in various languages, and translators are not available for live tours, then signage or audio tapes must be translated to make such options available. In addition, a need exists to provide a record of the tour and of the actual information accessed by the person taking the tour.
In order to find a solution to these needs, one may look to patents and existing technology. U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,227 (the '227 patent) to Obuchi discloses a tour schedule processor for processing tour schedules of moving bodies including a vehicle and a pedestrian. In the '227 patent, the tour schedule for the vehicle is located in a data terminal installed in a vehicle and the tour schedule for a driver is stored in a portable data terminal. U.S. Pat. No. 6,529,824 (the '824 patent) to Obradovich et al. discloses a location tagged data provision and display system using a personal communication device (PCD) having a GPS receiver and a display. A user requests maps and location tagged data from data providers by means of the PCD. The data providers use searching and sorting schemes to interrogate data bases and then transmit responsive data to the PCD. U.S. Pat. No. 6,009,429 (the '429 patent) to Greer et al. discloses a system for guiding a user through a tour of the World Wide Web (WWW) by displaying in sequence actual web pages in the tour along with corresponding teaching web pages. The tour includes “commentary, allowance for side trips, true visiting of the tour pages” and tours where the user clicks for the next page and tours where a timer controls how long a tour page is on-screen. U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,586 (the '586 patent) to Dietz discloses use of a text to voice application in conjunction with a voice to text application in a client server configuration in order to enable language translation devices.
In addition to prior art such as the '227 patent, the '824 patent and the '429 patent, existing technology has expanded the possibilities for assembling and delivering information during tours and for capturing statistical information regarding the tour itself. The technology that has expanded the possibilities for assembly, delivery and capture of information during tours of a physical space includes the Internet, telecommunications, and text-to-speech translation software (such as that disclosed in the '586 patent). These opportunities include the ability to gather data from a multitude of physically disparate locations connected by one or more networks, to provide a vast amount of information limited only by the size of a data base, to transmit this information by the Internet or by wireless communications, and to translate text based information into any language using text to speech translation software. These opportunities include the ability to provide tours independent of the need for live tour guides or voice talent for audio presentations. However, in order to capitalize on these opportunities, and in order to effectively exploit these opportunities, a need exists for a method and apparatus to assemble disparate information in a story narrative format and to deliver the information by text, audio, animation or visual means to a user where the user can interact with either the full data base or an extracted portion of the data base.